Health Benefits of Playing Badminton

Health Benefits of Playing Badminton

Just like any other sport, badminton offers its players a roster of health
benefits. Health Fitness Revolution gave the following advantages of playing
badminton:
 Physical fitness: Between the running, lunging, diving and ball
hitting, playing badminton burns fat at approximately 450 calories
per hour. This kind of cardiovascular workout can help keep you in tip
top shape, especially if you’re looking for a good alternative cross-
training exercise.
 Develops athleticism: The fast-paced nature of the game increases
your speed and improves your reflexes. Intelligence is also a factor
since players must know how to deceive their opponents in every
shot.
 Increased muscle tone: Playing badminton builds and tones the
quads, glutes, calves and hamstrings. In addition, your core muscles,
arm and back muscles get a workout as well.
 Psychological benefits: Because badminton promotes physical
fitness, it helps to reduce stress and anxiety. Exercise increases
endorphins, which are the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters, and
has also been found to improve mood and sleep.
 Social health: You’ll need at least one opponent, but you can also play
with a teammate and two other opponents. The social interactions of a
game will result in positive feelings after a session on the court.
Joining a league can also help you become part of a community.
 Good for overall health: As with all forms of physical
exercise, badminton can reduce or eliminate your risk for many health
problems, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity. It can
also reduce your risk for coronary heart disease by reducing your
triglyceride levels and increasing your “good” cholesterol.
 Flexibility and muscle strength: The more you move, the more
flexible you become, especially in a sport like badminton where
swinging and reaching are required. In addition to improving
flexibility, players also gain muscle strength and endurance.
 Mobility: As we age, mobility becomes limited, but staying active can
help prevent these problems. Keeping mobile lubricates your joints,
preventing arthritis and similar conditions from developing.
 Weight loss: Badminton can also help with weight control because of
its fat-burning and metabolism boosting qualities. Combined with
proper diet, optimal weight loss may be achieved.
 Decrease diabetes: It can decrease the production of sugar by the
liver and therefore can decrease fasting blood sugar. In fact, one study
from the Diabetes Prevention Program found that exercise decreased
Course Module
 the incidence of developing diabetes by 58% even better than
medication.
The website, badminton-information enumerated the following health
benefits of playing the sport:
“In fact it has been found that playing badminton till you get an increase in
heart rate or mild breathlessness regularly in middle age lowers the risk of
death by about 23% in the subsequent 20 years and improves longevity by at
least 2 years. The optimal health benefits are achieved by playing badminton
for at least 30 minutes a day after adequate warm up.

The main health benefit is reduction of bad cholesterol and increase in good
cholesterol with regular badminton play. In our body, total cholestero l,
triglycerides, low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and very low density
lipoproteins (VLDL) are bad cholesterols and high-density lipoprotein (HDL)
is the only good cholesterol.

Playing badminton regularly increases the levels of HDL good cholesterol

while decreasing the levels of bad cholesterols. As bad cholesterols
decrease the size of blood vessels promoting heart attacks and strokes,
reduction in their levels translates into multiple health benefits for the
individual.

Playing regular badminton conditions the body so that the basal heart rate
drops a few beats per minute and blood pressure is reduced. Both these
effects are helpful in hypertensive individuals. It may help them to ward
off their hypertension without medicines and even if they are needed, only
fewer amounts are required.

Another particular health benefit of playing regular badminton is protection

from heart disease, especially heart attacks. Playing badminton conditions
and strengthens the heart muscle besides reducing hypertension and
keeping blood vessels from clogging as we have seen earlier. Even people
with pre-existing heart disease can benefit by playing badminton within their
endurance levels under medical supervision and advise.

Regular indulgence in badminton helps overweight people to reduce their

weight and attain optimal weight for their height and age. This effect is
due to the excess calories burnt during playing badminton which prevents
them from accumulating as fat and increasing the individual's weight.

Moreover, the existing fat deposits are also mobilized to produce energy
while playing badminton. But for achieving optimal weight loss, it has to be
combined with diet modification as well.

Osteoporosis is a troublesome problem especially in the elderly and women

after menopause. It occurs because the bones loose their density due to
 complex interactions between the body hormones, bone forming and bone
dissolving cells. Individuals with osteoporosis can easily sustain fractures
because of reduced bone strength to withstand stress and injury.

Osteoporosis can be prevented or delayed by regularly playing badminton, as

physical activity is one major factor that prevents osteoporosis, irrespective
of the age and sex of the individual. Playing badminton promotes the
activity of the bone forming cells and help in the assimilation of calcium
in the bone matrix, thereby strengthening it.

Additional health benefit of playing regular badminton is reduced incidence

of cancers like cancer of the large bowel and cancer of breast.

Finally, playing badminton keeps you feeling well, strong, motivated,

enthusiastic and young. It helps to ward off depression, anxiety, stress and
increase self-esteem. It also helps in enjoying a better sleep in the night,
thereby minimizing the incidence of pre-existing illnesses getting aggravated
due to lack of sleep.”

Benefits and Disadvantages of Playing Badminton

Healt.ccm.net gave the following benefits of playing badminton as well as the
accompanying disadvantages of playing the game.
Benefits
Coordination, flexibility, endurance, visual acuteness
Badminton improves coordination, flexibility and balance. It exercises the
glutei (accelerations), abdominal and dorsal muscles (receptions and
returns), reinforces the joints. Badminton develops spatial perception and
visual acuteness. It also improves endurance, fights
against obesity, stress or anxiety.

In the long run

In the long run, the practice of badminton improves :
 Endurance,
 Reflexes,
 Perception and coordination of movements,
 Technicality,
 Centre of gravity.
Contraindications
Badminton, although it involves the majority of the muscles and joints of the
body, is not a sport to be avoided neither should it be seen as a dangerous
sport. Some precautions are to be taken at the following levels:
 The lower extremities,
Course Module
  The ankles (risks of sprains),
 The knees,
 Be careful of tendinitis, contusions,
 Risk of pain to the shoulders and the deltoids.
A non-contraindication certificate
An annual medical consultation is advised, to check the heart, respira tory,
ophthalmologic and articular functions. From the age of 35, more advanced
cardiac tests are required for competition.

Badminton and children

Badminton is first of all a ludic sport, easy and accessible at any age. It allows
the child or the adolescent:
 To practice an intensive sport while preserving his joints thanks to
the lightness and the handiness of the equipment,
 To improve his psychomotor capacities by the originality of the
trajectory of the shuttlecock,
 To sharpen his visual concentration and functions.

In short, badminton remains a sport that can be practiced by everybody,

outdoor or indoor, with more or less intensity, improving greatly the player's
wellbeing and physical condition.

References
Badminton – Benefits and disadvantages. Retrieved from:
http://health.ccm.net/contents/431-badminton-benefits-and-
disadvantages
Health Benefits of Playing Badminton. Retrieved from:
http://www.badminton-
information.com/health_benefits_of_playing_badminton.html
Top 10 Health Benefits of Badminton. Retrieved from:
http://www.healthfitnessrevolution.com/top-10-health-benefits-
badminton/